UN failed to protect victims

The United Nations failed to protect civilians and halt rights abuses during the end of Sri Lanka's civil war, according to an internal review that triggered an angry response Wednesday from the government.
The leaked report said the UN, under intense pressure from Sri Lankan authorities, did not make public that "a large majority" of deaths in the closing months of war in 2009 were caused by government shelling.
It also said that the Sri Lankan government's "stratagem of intimidation" -- including control of visas for critical UN staff -- prevented the UN from protecting civilians in the conflict zone.
Sri Lanka has faced severe international censure since its military campaign that crushed the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels in May 2009, ending decades of bloody ethnic warfare on the island.
Rights groups say up to 40,000 civilians were killed by government forces in the last few months of fighting, and the Tigers have also been accused of using civilians as a human shield.
The report said the UN withdrew from the island's north in September 2008 after Colombo warned it could not guarantee the safety of aid workers, allowing the military to carry out aerial bombardments that also hit civilians.
The report, which was leaked to the BBC, also criticises senior UN staff in Colombo who "did not perceive the prevention of killing of civilians as their responsibility".
"Events in Sri Lanka mark a grave failure of the UN," the draft report said, adding that the world body should "be able to meet a much higher standard in fulfilling its protection and humanitarian responsibilities".
UN officials in Colombo declined comment on the internal review, but said it would be made public after Secretary General Ban Ki-moon received it later this week.
"When he does receive it and had read it, it will be made public," the UN office in Colombo said.
Ban visited Sri Lanka shortly after the end of the fighting and extracted assurances from Colombo to probe war crimes. Colombo has rejected any international probe.